We want to see New Zealand families and young people have a realistic pathway into home ownership

People without a foot already on the property ladder face ever increasing barriers to owning their own home, leaving future generations of New Zealanders without the security and wealth afforded by property ownership.

UnitedFuture’s Rent-to-Own Housing Scheme will see houses that are already committed to being built by the Government offered as rental properties, where part of the rent goes towards saving for a deposit on the house.

Reallocate a portion of the Government’s building programme for rent-to-own housing

The Government recently announced a plan to build 34,000 new houses in Auckland.  Of these, 20,600 will be sold on the open market with a target of making them affordable.  Our plan would take half of these and offer them as rental properties under a rent-to-own programme.  This allows us to operate the scheme with no new spending.

Helping first home buyers and young families into home ownership

These rental properties would be offered at market rents to people who do not currently own their own home, and for whom the likelihood of ever saving for a deposit, which could easily be over $100,000, is remote. This is a huge sum of money for most families and first home buyers. UnitedFuture’s Rent-to-Own policy allows them to accumulate a deposit via their rent payments.

Rent payments that work like a hire purchase agreement

A portion of the rent paid to the Government (or community housing provider) covers their costs.

The rest of the rent will count towards either accumulating a deposit or purchasing an ownership share in the home. In this way a portion of every rental payment acts like a mortgage payment, allowing tenants to own an increasing proportion of the property.

A new pathway to home ownership

This policy would help more than 10,000 New Zealand families into their own home.  Once a tenant has accumulated enough of a deposit to secure commercial mortgage finance they will be offered the property. Alternatively, under a shared ownership scheme, tenants will continue to accumulate an ever greater share of the property over time.